


Advent XXVIII

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [30]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Gen, Happy, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:32:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here. A sweetie for all of you. Christmas is a time of love and good cheer, yeah? Well, I'm all in favor of love and good cheer, and I proceed to spread it liberally around this advent series. </p><p>Forgive me for putting one element in the background, rather than the foreground. It just worked better that way. </p><p>Have fun, chicas y chicos. Lurv and Christmas--what more can you ask for? XD</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent XXVIII

“Walk with me?” Mycroft said to Lestrade.

Lestrade nodded, and the two men sought out their coats and pulled on boots and wrapped scarves around their necks.

“Put on a hat,” Lestrade said, gently. “Fifty percent of your heat-loss is from your head.”

“Old wive’s tale,” Mycroft said, decisively. “Utter bosh.”

“Yeah, but you’re short insulation up there.”

Mycroft glowered.

“Come on, Mike, do it for me?”

“What has brought on this entirely unnecessary bout of maternalism?”

“Paternalism. Get the gender right, even if you’re off on the relationship,” Lestrade said, laughing. “Just feeling all full of Christmas supper and sentiment. I think the postprandial brandy had an effect. Put on a hat, Mike. I’ll feel better.”

“Ridiculous,” Mycroft muttered, but dug through the coat closet and eventually pulled out an ancient bobble-hat. He pulled it on, smiling ruefully. “The things I do for you. Satisfied?”

Lestrade beamed. “Satisfied.”

The two set off together down the drive, heading toward the main road. It was heavy going. The snow wasn’t deep, but each step dragged at their boots. The night was clear again, the stars a brilliant river.

“One or two more days till full moon,” Lestrade said. “And look—there’s Orion.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, smiling to himself. “The hunter’s high this season.”

“Nah,” Lestrade said, voice smirking. “I’ve kept an eye on him. Slightly tiddly, maybe. He drank his share of brandy. Twitterpated—that girl Janine’s got him blind and stumbling. Not high.”

Mycroft snorted. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He looked around. “When I was a child, sometimes it would snow properly at the Dower House—not like here in the south, where there’s never a proper cover. Father would get out _his_ father’s old sleigh, and borrow two old plough horses from one of the local farmers, and drive us out at night. Sherlock loved it—he’d stand on the seat with his fingers tight on the front rail and squeal for the entire drive, stars in his eyes and hair flying.”

“If you start singing ‘Sleigh Ride’ I will hit you,” Lestrade said, darkly. “I know it’s Christmas, and I love me some Christmas music, I do—but even I’m beginning to top out, Holmes.”

Mycroft chuckled, and sang, “Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening. A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight—“

Lestrade smacked his arm with the back of his wrist. “Shut it,” he growled, amiably. “Enough, you prat, before we start building snowmen and asking them to marry us. It’s legal, now—if we get married I want it to be by a proper minister or JP or registrar, yeah? No snowmen.”

“But there’s the dreaming by the fire, after,” Mycroft pointed out in sweet, false solemnity.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lestrade growled. “Walk, Mike. One-two-one-two, move it or I start singing marching songs, and then you’ll be sorry.”

Mycroft smiled, and slipped his arm through Lestrade’s. “Not sorry. Amused and provoked—but never Sorry. Shall we turn around after we reach that big oak?”

Lestrade slipped his free hand over Mycroft’s. “Yeah. That looks far enough,” he said, and they walked silently together in the snow and the night and the shining stars.

 

“Whotcher,” Janine said, slipping up beside Sherlock as he lurked in the window seat part-way up the front stairs. “Room for two?”

He looked up, then grinned. He wrapped long fingers around her wrist and pulled sharply, guiding her laughing fall so that she landed sprawled in his lap, leaning against his chest. “Room for one,” he said. “Now, hush. This is a stakeout.”

“Stakeout?” She studied his face. “Ooooh, someone’s being a bad boy tonight. I can see it. What’s up, Shay-Shay?”

His eyes narrowed with laughter. “I’m spying on Mike and Lestrade.”

“Ye’ are?” She twisted and squirmed. “Y’ve got me all wrong way ‘round to see,” she complained, and rose, then crept over his knees until she could coil into the turn of his arm, between him and the vast window. She looked out and found the figures of the two men picked out in sharp silhouette against the snow. “Yeah, there they are. Why you spying, Shez?”

“Because,” he said in smug satisfaction, “they’re both just burning to pop the question this weekend—and if Christmas night isn’t the time for it I don’t know when is. I would estimate there’s a near-absolute certainty each has a small package in his pocket, and is nerving himself right now to ask a particular question—and the only real uncertainty is which will manage to ask it first.”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s just too feckin’ sweet for words.”

Sherlock snorted. “It is, isn’t it? If you’d asked me a year ago if either was a man given to excessive bouts of sentiment, or could be considered in any sense ‘adorable,’ I’d have suggested you’d been visiting my friend Billy and purchased one of his more experimental cocktails. But of late?” He shuddered and made a small gagging sound. “My one hope is that after they accomplish wedded bliss they will revert to their former stoic norms.”

She chuckled and pinched his arm. “Wrong. You’re enjoying every soppy bit of it.”

“Only because I have always wished to see Mycroft’s downfall,” he assured her. “It’s better than a thousand successful apple-pie beds and buckets of water balanced on the door top.”

“Liar,” she said, and cuddled into his side. “I know what kind of man you are. All the layers. Top one may be horrified. But the part that’s curled on a window seat spyin’ to make sure it comes out right for Mike an’ Greg? That’s a different fellow.” Her fingers found his and tangled. “Y’ don’t have to be easy with it to feel it, Shay.”

He grumbled quietly, but didn’t untangle their fingers or pull away.

Somewhere in the house music still played, like an endless soundtrack of the holiday.

_Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling too,_

_Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you…._

Sherlock’s mouth flicked, and he sniggered. “Father used to take us on sleigh rides at the Dower House, when there was snow,” he said, listening. “Me and Mycroft and Mummy. It’s like…” He closed his eyes, unconsciously pulling her closer. “It’s like running over the roofs in London. It’s like… It’s like that snap when all the clues come together and everyone’s waiting for you to explain what’s suddenly so clear, so obvious. It’s amazing.” He opened his eyes. Then, his voice hesitant, he said, “I used to spy on Mike back then, too—for years. Well—he was the big brother, after all. And he could be so damned secretive—sometimes over nothing at all. Sometimes it was interesting. But…”

She heard the uneasiness stir in his voice. “What is it, Shay?”

“I followed him when he was nineteen, and home from uni for Christmas. It was here. He brought a friend with him. I was so angry—we don’t _do_ friends, me and Mycroft. And there he was for Christmas, with a friend. So I followed them.”

She shivered, already guessing the outcome. “Didn’t like what you saw?”

“Scared me stupid. I was at the age where there was nothing worse than being called a queer—and I was called a queer all the time. Arse bandit. Poof. Fairy.” He glanced out at the window, where the two men could just be seen under the wide, barren branches of an oak, heads bent toward each other. “I was so angry,” he said, and she could hear traces of it even now. “So angry.”

“And you blabbed, didn’t you?”

“It’s what I do,” he said, all irony.

“Didn’t go well?”

“You could say that.”

They were both silent. He held her tight, and rested his chin on the top of her head as they both watched out the window.

“Look,” she said, softly. “I think…”

“Dead heat,” Sherlock said, laughter in his voice. “They couldn’t have done better if they’d choreographed it.”

“You think a kiss, next?”

“No. Not till they’re back in their room and can make the most of it.”

She nodded, then said, softly, “So maybe we should kiss for them—just to celebrate.”

He snorted his amusement, but rolled slightly, and they rearranged themselves on the wide window seat. “It’s like a sleigh ride,” he said, voice shivery and thrilled, and lowered his lips over hers.

_Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we! We’re cuddled up together like two birds of a feather would be._

_Sleigh Ride!_

“John?”

“Ssshhhhh-shhh-shhhhhh!” John gestured frantically to his wife as she came down the hall behind him. “Shhhhh!”

She was instantly quiet, slipping silently up beside him. “Trouble?” She wasn’t panicking, but she was on alert.

“No. Look!” He could barely contain his glee. “Look!”

She craned around his arm, peeking out the doorway of the hall onto the stairway landing. “What? Where? No one’s here.”

“Down. On the window seat,” he whispered.

She leaned further, and then had to fight back a delighted giggle. “Oh, oh, oh! Well! They show some talent!”

He nodded. “Who’d have thought it. That’s my boy! Look at him!”

“She’s got her own moves, now, John,” she said, discerningly. “Knows her way around, she does…”

“That she does,” John said, and added, “Maybe we’d better move back. It’s getting a bit steamy…”

He shuffled back down the corridor, Mary giggling behind him.

“But I wanted hot chocolate and roast chestnuts…”

He muttered something about roast nuts that wasn’t proper in the least, and she sang softly, “Off with my overcoat, off with my gloves: I need no overcoat, I’m burning with love!” He clucked at her, and dragged her back and away, until he was sure they were well out of hearing—and proceeded to fall apart with laughter, leaning against the gorgeous old wainscoting, arms wrapped around his ribs. In his entirely unreliable voice he sang, “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus…”

“No,” Mary said, firmly, eyes shining. “That’s our part, not Sherlock’s.” She flowed up against him, arms going around his neck, and said, “Even Mummy and Father ducked out early. Why don’t we slip down the back way, steal a bottle of brandy, and come back upstairs, Santa?”

He grinned, and hugged her tight. “I think that’s a brilliant idea, Mrs. Claus.”

And together they scurried off, with mischief on their minds and love in their hearts for all people of good will. After all—it was Christmas, and love was in the air along with the scent of gingerbread, peppermint, and pine.

 

 **Nota Bene:** Sticking with secular songs for this…though all classics of their kind.

[Winter Wonderland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf237dVhLyU)

[Sleigh Ride](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuiNUN9lrK4)  This version by the Pentatonix is just plain fun, and catches some of the gleeful excitement I imagine young Sherlock feeling…

[I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0677H1EPdB0)

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus Mellencamp, because today I would rather rock down than die of diabetic shock from Teh Sweetness (it burns, my precious, it burns….)


End file.
